The Darkness of the TARDIS
by dragonwings948
Summary: When the TARDIS shuts down, inhabited by frightening creatures the Meta-Crisis Doctor knows very well, Rose and TenToo have to figure out a way to get rid of the intruders while keeping their eyes wide open as the mischievous new TARDIS gains a mind of its own. Fifth installment in the Doctor WhoToo series. :) Copyright to the BBC.
1. Chapter 1

A cold fear grew in the pit of Rose's stomach. There weren't many things that scared her anymore, but seeing the Doctor in this state was one of them. His eyes were wide, unblinking, and filled with a calm, subdued fear.

"Rose," the Doctor said from across the console, just a few meters from the door to the hallway. "Come here." He stretched out one of his arms toward her, but still didn't meet her gaze.

She didn't question him. There was no trace of joking anywhere in his face. She ran the short distance to him, grabbing his hand and pressing herself close to him. Being near to him made her feel much safer.

The Doctor reached into his jacket pocket and produced his sonic screwdriver. He extended his arm out behind her, and she heard the buzz of the tool a few seconds later.

"How in the universe..." he mumbled in disbelief.

"Doctor?" Her voice came out as a squeak. "Why can't I look?"

He squeezed her hand. "You have to trust me. Don't let go of me. Whatever you do, don't let go." Letting out a shaky sigh, the Doctor winked one eye at a time. "I need you to run to your room, as fast as you can, and don't look back."

"How are we going to get in if the power's down?"

The Doctor tilted his sonic screwdriver toward her, and she grabbed it from his hand. Rose fiddled around with it for a few seconds before figuring out the button that made the familiar buzzing.

"When do I run?" She looked up at him, though his gaze was still fixed behind her.

He steeled his jaw. "Now."

Rose turned and ran, expecting some sort of alien beast to tackle her to the ground any second, or to feel sharp claws rake down her back...

She shook the thoughts away, the Doctor's hold helping to keep her sane. Their footsteps echoed through the hallway, dimly lit by the white floor. Rose held up the sonic as she reached the door to her room, pressing the correct button. It buzzed, and the door slid open a moment later. She ran inside, still dragging the Doctor behind her. Before she could turn around to sonic it shut, the screwdriver was torn from her hand and its hum sounded a second later.

For a minute or two, Rose couldn't see anything. The floor in here was a metallic silver instead of the white outside, which had made it brighter. Now, everything was pitch black. She could feel the Doctor just in front of her, but couldn't clearly see his face. His breathing was rapid and shaky.

As Rose waited for her eyes to adjust, she felt the Doctor release his hand from her hold. He caressed her cheek gently and ran his other hand through her hair. His lips pressed against her forehead for a few seconds, and then he pulled away from her, taking her hand in his again. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief, and then slumped against the wall, finally looking at her. He tucked the sonic back into his pocket with care.

"What was it?" Rose asked, able to see his face now, and wondering at the sudden show of affection. "Why can't I look at it?"

"Do you really want to know?" His eyes told of some sort of deep fear, but his normal confidence almost outshone it.

"Yeah," she said softly, not sure that she really did. She reminded herself that whatever it was, it had broken into the TARDIS.

The Doctor's eyes searched hers, and his eyebrows furrowed together. "A weeping angel."


	2. Chapter 2

"A what?" The name wasn't familiar at all.

"Weeping angel. They're some of the most terrifying beings I've ever met."

Rose thought back through all the tales he had told her of his adventures before and after her. "You never told me about them."

"I didn't want to scare you."

The words sent a chill up her spine. "Why do they want to kill us?"

"Not kill." The Doctor shook his head, looking down at the ground. "The weeping angels don't kill. Not usually." He met her gaze. "It's worse than that. If they touch you, they send you back in time to wherever they please to live out your days years away from everyone you've ever known. They feed off of the temporal energy of the life you could have had."

Rose considered this, and realized just how serious the situation was. "Couldn't you just use the TARDIS to find me?"

"The TARDIS could lock onto your location," he said slowly, in a lower voice. "But there's no telling _when_ it would lock onto you. It could find you when you're thirty, or..." His voice dropped so low that she almost didn't hear him. "...when you're dead in your grave."

The thought of it made Rose shudder. "Why didn't the angel touch me?"

"They can't move if someone's looking at them. But if you blink, just blink, you can be gone. They're faster than you would believe."

"Then why couldn't I look at it?"

His eyes became unfocused for a minute, and then he shook himself back to normal. "If you stare at it for too long, it will get inside your head, and turn you into one of them."

"What about you?" she asked, her voice rising in volume. "Is that going to happen to you?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't want me. My half-time lord brain would consume it."

Rose thought about how she had been so close to being whisked away to another time without the Doctor, without her family or anyone else. "How close was it?"

The Doctor stood up straight and reached toward her shoulder, his hand hovering no more than a few centimeters away. He swallowed hard and eyed her with an intense gaze. "I saw it just in time."

And then she understood why he had been so relieved when they had entered the room. Her entire life with the Doctor had been in danger, and she had had no idea...

Rose wrapped her arms around him, frightened and relieved at the same time. The Doctor stood stock still for a moment, as if he was surprised, but then returned the embrace and held her close. Rose never wanted to leave his comforting hold, wishing that they could just stay like this forever and never have to face the monsters again.

The angels. They had come in through the TARDIS door, so what was stopping them from coming through her door?  
Rose pulled away from the Doctor. "Won't they be able to get in here?"

"No. I soniced the door closed."

"How did they get in the first time, then?"

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know exactly. Maybe it has something to do with the rift, or the contempulated model security circuits, I've been meaning to-"

"The rift? You mean they're not from this universe?"

The Doctor sniffed. "Ah, no. The angels got through a rift from the other universe after a paradox ripped a hole in time. At least, that's what it seems like."

"But how could the rift open again?"

"The rift has been healing ever since it last closed. Nothing could get through it, but the angels must have done something in Manhattan of 1934 in the other universe to create a paradox that opened a small hole in the rift. The angels came through...and here they are."

Rose couldn't help but let her thoughts wander just a little to the source of the paradox. Had the other Doctor been involved?

"I hope he's all right," she muttered, mostly to herself. The Doctor looked pointedly at her, but said nothing.

"So what do we do now?" Rose asked after a minute.

"Hm?" The Doctor looked at her, his eyebrows raised. "Sorry. Well, we have to get to the TARDIS' engine while avoiding the weeping angels."

"How many are there?"

"I have no idea."

"And how are we going to get there?"

The Doctor sprinted to the other side of her room, pressing his palms against the wall. "Every room in the TARDIS is connected through secret doors." He rubbed the wall gently, as if caressing it. "She's still in here, somewhere, and there might still be enough of her left to open the door."

Rose followed him, a bit confused as to what he was saying. "Do you mean the TARDIS is still...awake?" she asked, for lack of a better word. "She can hear us?"

"Maybe. Hopefully. Because otherwise, we're stuck here." There was a long silence, the Doctor looking at the wall thoughtfully with his brow crinkled.

"You gonna try that secret door?" asked Rose after a minute.

He turned around, sniffed, and squared his shoulders. "I'm thinking it through. The other doors aren't soniced closed, which means that the angels can get through them. Any room we go into could be filled with them."

Rose examined his expression, debating and concerned. She could tell it wasn't the only think bothering him. "Yeah, and?"

"The password to the door." He looked at her with an intense gaze. "It's the only thing no one else in any universe knows." His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "My name."

His eyes told her everything. He was pleading with her, begging to retain this one secret. He wasn't ready for her to know yet.

But she didn't feel offended. A secret like that could only be told at a certain time, a certain place, and after much consideration. She knew that he had a good reason for keeping it from her now.

Rose nodded. "It's okay, I get it," she said gently.

He beamed at her and reached out for her hand, running his thumb over her knuckles. "One day, Rose. I will tell you one day."

"I'll hold you to it," said Rose with a smile. Goosebumps ran up her arm as the air grew colder. She supposed that since the TARDIS was offline, the cold Manhattan night was seeping through. "Be right back." She let go of his hand and walked over to her closet, where she found a soft black overcoat. She pulled it on and shivered from the cozy feeling inside.

Rose glanced over at the Doctor. He was still leaned against the wall, murmuring something too low for her to hear from this far away. She looked down to button up her coat, and by the time she looked back up, there was a dark doorway in front of the Doctor.

"You brilliant girl!" exclaimed the Doctor, caressing the TARDIS wall again.

Rose rushed over to him and peeked inside the dark room. "What room is this?"

"Mine."


	3. Chapter 3

She looked up at his placid expression, his eyes scanning the new room. "Really? It's right next to mine?"

"No." He didn't look at her, but pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned it across the entire room, lighting up small bits of it. "Like I said, every room is connected. She could have opened the doorway to any room."

"Then why yours?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. She knows where we want to go, so she must have some reason for bringing us here." He tilted his chin up and gave a threatening look to the ceiling. "I hope." Without another word, the Doctor darted into the room. Rose heard the sonic screwdriver go off, and then the Doctor appeared in the doorway.

"It's safe. No weeping angels." He offered her his hand and she took it, stepping through the doorway. She looked back through, her room still there.

Rose paused. "So you could get through there any time you want?"

The Doctor scratched the back of his head, avoiding her gaze. "Well..."

"Doctor!"

"It was only once...twice... Just checking on you while you were sleeping." He gave her the most disarming smile.

It was so hard to remember her point when he looked at her like that. "Making sure the bedbugs don't bite me?" she joked.

He scoffed at her. "Don't be ridiculous. The TARDIS doesn't have bedbugs."

"Then what?" She expected him to either ignore her or continue joking, but instead his expression turned serious.

"The TARDIS could tell you were having nightmares," he said simply. "I wanted to take them away."

"You can take away nightmares?"

"Well, not exactly. I can take them and put them in my mind, where I can push them away."

A picture came into her mind of the Doctor sitting on the edge of her bed, leaning over her and pressing her temples with his fingertips as she slept. He closed his eyes, shuddered, and then sighed. He stood up then, shoving his hands into his pockets and gazing at her. Right as he looked like he was about to walk away, he turned back, leaned over, and kissed her forehead.

Rose then thought about the recent nightmares she had had; ones about her family being worried, ones where her Doctor left her all alone... They would all seem so silly to him.

"I dream about the same things," he said, as if reading her thoughts. "Not exactly, but I have nightmares about my family. And you..." He paused, and then cleared his throat and nodded. "Anyway, we need to find out what we're here for." As if it was an afterthought, the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the doorway to her room and pressed the button to activate it. The wall slid downwards as the screwdriver buzzed, finally concealing the passageway altogether.

Wondering in the back of her mind what the Doctor dreamed about her, Rose continued her examination of the new room. Against the far wall sat a large desk with a rolling chair in front of it. She tugged the Doctor that way, realizing that the desk was covered with ink strewn papers. A shelf extended above the desk, but it only contained six random objects, all spaced out neatly. Rose picked up the object that was front and center on the shelf; a red rose, its petals soft and silky to the touch. Behind it, and all the way to the left, laid a thick book. Next to that, a chunk of metal, and adjacent to that was a thick, black cube, just small enough to fit in someone's palm. The fifth thing was an old, faded recipe card for a cheese souffle, and last was an unraveled black bowtie, curled up into a heap.

"What are these?" asked Rose, running her fingertips over the book's bent cover.

The Doctor reached out from behind her and took the rose in his hand, stroking it fondly. "They remind me of the people I traveled with. There are a lot more, of course, but since I'm a copy of the tenth regeneration of myself, these are the people that I remember the most. Not to say that the others aren't important, by any means."

He came to stand beside her and released her hand, a deep sadness in his eyes. One corner of his mouth twitched upwards into a lopsided smile as he gingerly set down the rose and picked up the book, which Rose realized was a compilation of some of Shakespeare's finest works.

"Martha. Good old William still wrote in this universe." He put it back where it was and picked up the piece of metal. Swallowing hard, he turned it over in his hand. A few unlit lights dotted it here and there, and there was one big hole on one end of it, as if it was supposed to plug into something. For some reason, it looked very familiar...

"Dimension stabilizer," the Doctor said in a strained voice. "One of Donna's modifications for growing a TARDIS."

Rose vaguely remembered the Doctor constructing his TARDIS growth chamber. He had shown her so many things that she hadn't understood but that he had been so proud of; this must have been one of them.

The Doctor put the metal back quickly and picked up the cube, his eyebrows furrowing together. "I'm not really sure about this one." He swept his hands over the desk below, finally snatching a paper out of the middle of the mess. As he held it up, Rose saw that a young woman's face, not much older than herself probably, had been drawn in dark ink.

The Doctor looked at it with a sad smile, holding it up with both hands. "Amelia Pond," he said in a whisper. After a few seconds he shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, pressing one of his palms on the side of his head. He clenched his teeth and took in a sharp breath, as if he was in pain.


End file.
